Almost everybody with an Internet connection in Brazil has already seen Daniela Cicarelli's steamy video on the web since it first appeared four months ago and got linked on the first page of the main news portals. Funny as it is, the recent blocking of YouTube to many internauts in the country was the response of two large fixed-line telephone operators to a judicial order meant to prevent Brazilians from seeing what they had already seen — scenes of the supermodel, MTV hostess, and ex-wive of football star Ronaldo having intimate exchanges with her boyfriend Tato Malzoni in a beach near the Spanish city of Cadiz.

As a result the case has made headlines worldwide during the last weekend, which in combination with the blogosphere reverb effect has set the video audience into an exponential growth. The censored video piece is now hosted in a slew of other video services all over the web, which is totally against the [alleged] purpose of the YouTube blocking in Brazil, and very much confirms the Net's capability of naturally working around obstacles to it's free flow of information. Brazilian bloggers are not happy with the censorship and, as expected, Daniela earned her own personal boycott campaign website:

… we congratulate Mrs. Daniela Cicarelli for her efforts in confirming the stereotype of model-and-hostess as trifler and stupid. Let's follow the facts: first she marries the poor Ronaldo in a palace called Chantilly, breaking up only 86 days after and supposedly receiving R$ 15 million as compensation — which would make R$ 7.267 per hour. Then she have sex in a beach in Spain for everyone to see, including a paparazzo, and gets mad when the video is published. Instead of keeping her mouth shut in order to let the issue dies, she decides to push a judicial order which ends up blocking YouTube to all BrasilTelecom users. In addition to that, she exasperates internauts by putting Brazil aside with Internet-unfriendly countries as Cuba, China and Iran.Congratulations, Cicarelli – Martelada

Don't try to fool me with this ‘image rights’ bullshit. I know the arguments by heart, and the fact is: a public figure has a very tiny right to her image when in a public place. You want privacy? Go to a motel. If a paparazzo breaks into the room, or if a hidden camera records your images, then you can sue as you wish. But, in a beach? Oh please… Daniela, you've got to accept the risks of your behavior, harvest the dividends of your overexposition, and shut your mouth.Cicarelli, censorship and the Brazilian Justice stupitity – Dia de Folga

This blog was created to promote a country without censorship, where the rights of an individual do not harm the rights of all!… If Fat Ronaldo's ex thinks she has the right to f… in a public place visited by families with kids and gets upset afterwards if someone film and publish on the web, it is her problem. What is not right is to harm all Brazilians who use YouTube just because the couple could not wait enough to reach the motel!… So, let's stop the evil influence in it's beginning! Let's boycott Cicarelli until she give up her intentions! If she feels harmed by the video, sue YouTube, but do not harm the Brazilians who use it, and also do not originate gloomy precedents!A brief explanation about this blog – Boycott to Cicarelli

The explosive reaction of the internauts was somehow fueled by the extensive coverage of the YouTube blocking by TV news. So it was not by chance that Cicarelli entered the circuit by giving an interview to ‘Jornal da Globo’ — one of the main Brazilian news show — where she declared that her boyfriend, Brazilian banker Renato [Tato] Malzoni, was the one who filed the legal case which resulted in YouTube being shut off until Tuesday. Bloggers were quick to find out that her story presented some inconsistencies, and that her interview could be part of a strategy to save her image — or maybe to save MTV from the boycott.

The CicaGate went through a turnover after the ex-Ronaldinha Daniella Cicarelli appeared on TV crying Heloisa Helena's tears and declaring herself abused as she had nothing to do with the legal case that closed YouTube. But this is not the way the band plays. Let's have a look at an analysis from a legal point of view, made by Zictor, who is the first case of self-invited author in Contraditorium's history: “On this fake interview to Jornal da Globo (which is on YouTube, hehe), she tries to sell the idea that she has nothing to do with the case, that she will not derive any compensation. LIES. She is part of the main suit, the one which calls for compensation. Tato's ‘isolated’ order was made under the SAME SUIT, based on a previous decision in the SAME SUIT.CicaGate: A legal view from the imbroglio – Contraditorium

… it was not her initiative to come out to meet the press [she even gave an interview to ‘Jornal da Globo’] and declare that it was Tato Malzoni the one responsible for the suit [the goal was to ban the steamy video where she appears with Tato in the beach]. It was MTV directors who pressed Cicarelli to find a way to save the broadcasting company image, or face the risk of losing her job… A protest by YouTube fans who will ask for her dismissal is scheduled to happen tomorrow [Saturday], at 13:00, at MTV's main entrance in Sao Paulo.Daniela faces the risk of losing her job at MTV – Zapping / Ilustrada

From what we observe in this case, good old strategies that used to work well in similar situations some years ago are backfiring one after the other.

“Although legitimate, the majority of these protests share in essence the same perspective they attack, as they are somehow promoting censorship to a TV channel. Besides that, there are many other issues in need of protests and MTV has always been ready to debate them all.” The preciousness above is quoted from the MTV Official Note about the Cicarelli case… MTV should have stayed quiet!MTV Official Note – Blog do CeJunior

A “company that has always struggled in favor of freedom of expression” should not confound boycott with censorship… the State is the one capable of censoring individuals and TV channels. If the citizen disagrees, the vote is the fundamental tool to change. Boycott is the tool consumers have to influence private business decisions… Which is to say that the consumer votes with his wallet.MTV defends Cicarelli e confounds boycott with censorship… spin cara dura – br.br101.org

… after calling thousands of exasperated users ‘authoritarians’ for supporting the boycott initiative to the MTV brand, and still declaring being in favour of freedom of expression, MTV was once again caught in a obnoxious attitude. Payola, hypocrisy and immorality, this is the dorsal spine of this company.MTV lies to defend Cicarelli and Youtube ban – Smoking Cobra

Brazilian judges who produced the order which resulted in YouTube's blocking were also caught in the wave of protests around the case. The appeals court judge who wrote the sentence soon found out that some strategy should be put in practice in order to revert the explosion of criticism from the blogosphere. Although seeing a positive side in YouTube's temporary blocking, as an indication that global Internet companies must adhere to local legislation, judge Ênio Santarelli Zuliani was fast in reverting the judicial order's result by explaining that the block should affect only the disputed video piece and not the whole site. Legal specialists are seeing the case as an opportunity to develop concepts that will help dealing with similar situations in the future.

…while the appeals court judge continues his chase on ‘YouTube's signal':
“5. The reporter thanks for the good will presented by the operators who promptly acted in accordance to the orders from the First Level Justices. We believe that the complete blocking of the site occurred as a result of technical constraints to the creation of filters to ban the access to the couple's video. But the blocking to the whole site was not expressed in the order, which only mentioned the block to electronic addresses which divulged the video prohibited by the legal decision. There is even no reference to an extensive block in case of inability to block the specific addresses.
6. As a mean to execute the order correctly, the reporter resolve to forward a new order to reestablish YouTube's signal (sic), requesting the operators to unblock the access and inform the Justice about the technical reasons of the presumed inability of performing blocks to specific electronic addresses”.Sem Tato – O Hermeneuta

How to deal with a case where a video recorded in Spain is published in an US portal by some regular citizen, affecting another citizen in another country? In my opinion, local Justice is responsible for watching over local citizen's individual rights… We are just starting this debate, which keeps getting more important each day. The jurisdiction conflict between national and global will be more present as the Internet enlarges it's influence, and it's bullshit to define the Judge's attitude as censorship. He is just fulfilling his duty in a field where there is no adequate jurisprudence.YouTube case – Luis Nassif Online

The difficulty to enforce the legal order — the block of a specific video on a site — is due to technical issues, that is, related to the software used to publish the content on the worldwide network. If there was a filter capable of doing what was requested by the judges, there would be no way for YouTube to allege difficulty in doing so. The filter should be capable of automatically refusing the internauts to post the video again after being removed. But this filter do not exist, and it's development is not easy and cheap. YouTube code was developed focusing on the website goals, which are tuned to the freedom of expression concepts which inspires its design. The fact that the supermodel and her boyfriend exceeded in their public display and later filed suits against the publishing of the video on the web created the meaningful and worldwide diffused case that helps us understand the supremacy of code in cyberspace ordering. Who would imagine? Cicarelli is making us think.Cicarelli promotes legal philosophy – Consultor Jurídico

One interesting thing about the Brazilian cyberspace is its quickness in creatively responding to the issues gathering noticeable amount of attention. Cicarelli's case is not different, and the reply this time comes in the form of a health campaign sponsored by the state of Rio Grande Sul which is now the big hit in the Brazilian youtubesphere. We hope that Google's filters are good enough to distinguish the parody from the original…

While the fight between Google and Cicarelli grows hotter, the Health Secretary of Rio Grande do Sul made a beautiful parody of Ronaldo's ex-wife prohibited video with two actors dressed as mosquitoes to an alert campaign about the dengue mosquito which, as everybody knows, breed in the water.Mosquitoes in Daniella Cicarelli's video – Reporter Net

The model has commented in an interview to Folha de Sao Paulo about the Rio Grande do Sul's health campaign which made a parody with two actors dressed as dengue mosquitoes in a beach to show that the insect “can breed anywhere [!]”. “I think it's a big lack of respect that a health institution made such a thing! A remarkable lack of respect”, she added.Cicarelli comenta o caso YouTube para a imprensa – Nilton Tio Sam

We will keep following the issue in order to bring relevant updates to the interested readers.

[…] A quick review of previous Global Voices’ posts about Brazil will convincingly shows why we say that the local blogosphere is one of the hottest firing lines in the push for digital liberties. Starting from the blocking of blogs by the Electoral Justice System during the last elections (Election and Censorship Dialectics in the Brazilian Blogosphere), and the voting of a bill in Congress that would require identification for any web action involving interactivity (Holding the line for Internet freedoms in Brazilian Cyberspace), to the latest scandal that blocked YouTube access in the country (Cicarelli Case: Censorship and Boycott Dialectics in the Brazilian Blogosphere), the world is getting accustomed to hearing about Internet battles in Brazil. It is becoming an endless clash of real world institutions against the YOU of the virtual environment. Yes, YOU, the Time magazine 2006 person of the year. […]

[…] As soon as the information about the verdict circulated on the net, Portuguese posts commenting the 4 year in prison sentence given to blogger Abdel Kareem Suleiman started to appear. Brazilian bloggers sensitiveness about any situation involving censorship is a direct consequence of the many recent attacks to their freedoms on the Internet, as showed by previous GV reports here, here, here, and also here. That’s why they are ever ready to take a stance and fight to maintain a status they believe they’ve already conquered for themselves. In addition, Kareem’s case brings in some reflexions about how different might be the Arab culture in relation to the freedom notions Brazilians are now practicing through blogging. […]

[…] As the criminal content in this case is still not clear, and considering that the offensive blog, according to what some bloggers and twitters have heard, has had all previous posts deleted [we decided not to publicize the URL as it shows the name of the offended person], it is very possible that the blanket ban will not ultimately happen. However, as many bloggers have pointed out, this all sounds scarily familiar to some bloggers, who have already seen an astoundingly similar decision enforced in the very same way in Brazil. […]

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